05
Circular Products
- Client
- EMR
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Sector
- Steel
Metsims collaborated with European Metal Recycling (EMR) to develop the world's first EPD for ultra-low carbon reusable steel. The project focused on quantifying the environmental benefits of EMR's circular process, which recovers steel from demolition sites for reuse without remelting. By including avoided emissions and circularity impacts, the study revealed that EMR's reusable steel emits 97.5% less carbon than conventional steel. This milestone highlights EMR's innovation in embodied carbon reduction and supports the construction sector's shift toward low-impact materials.
The challenge
EMR is a leader in metals recycling and reuse. In addition to the company's own net-zero goal, its products and services play a key role in helping industries such as the construction sector to reduce Scope 3 emissions. One of EMR's innovations is its Reusable Steel products, which involves identifying, recovering, and preparing potentially reusable materials from demolition projects for application in the next generation of sustainable construction products. This circular process significantly reduces the embodied emission of the steel products, which represents as much as 50% of the total carbon footprint of a building development project. However, existing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) do not readily capture emissions savings from reusable steel, revealing a missed opportunity to meet the growing demand for certified green products.
Our solutions
We worked closely with EMR to map the reusable steel workflow and define the system boundary with considerations for the inputs and outputs from the circular processes. For example, the raw material impacts cover both the embodied emissions from the reused materials and the avoided emissions associated with steel sections fabricated with virgin steel. Manufacturing, deconstruction, transportation and waste management processes associated with the end-to-end reusable steel workflow are also included.
Impacts of project
Without the need for remelting, long-distance transportation and the addition of nature-depleting iron ore, this EPD confirms that reusing steel beams and columns recovered by EMR within end-of-life buildings creates 97.5% less carbon emissions than conventional steel products (47 kgCO₂e per tonne compared with the World Steel Association's global average for steelmaking of 1,850 kgCO₂e).
Hear from client
We're delighted that EMR has achieved the world's first Environmental Product Declaration for its transformative, ultra-low carbon reusable steel. Working with Metsims Sustainability Consultancy, EMR has obtained the EPD (S-P-06356) at a time when around 70% of international and European green building standards offer credits for the use of materials labelled by an EPD. As the industry urges the government to introduce legislation targeting embodied carbon, EMR's reusable steel highlights how the industry is innovating and stepping up to make the changes needed to help decarbonize the construction sector.